Gopher - http://www.marksteeregames.com/Gopher_hex_rules.pdf
I designed Gopher specifically for my first BGA program. I was planning to program Flume, but Flume has multiple moves per turn. Probably not a big deal, but I just wanted the simplest game imaginable. I initially had Gopher on a square grid but two problems surfaced. 1. Red was always on one color of squares and Blue on the other color. Sub-grids were mainly just an aesthetic issue. You didn't really need two colors of checkers. 2. Player 1, starting in a corner, was able to force all of Player 2's moves. That was a real problem.
Moving Gopher to a hexagonal grid solved both of those problems. And it's actually a surprisingly good game. But being on a hexagonal grid, it's no longer the simplest game imaginable.
Mark
http://www.marksteeregames.com/index.html
I designed Gopher specifically for my first BGA program. I was planning to program Flume, but Flume has multiple moves per turn. Probably not a big deal, but I just wanted the simplest game imaginable. I initially had Gopher on a square grid but two problems surfaced. 1. Red was always on one color of squares and Blue on the other color. Sub-grids were mainly just an aesthetic issue. You didn't really need two colors of checkers. 2. Player 1, starting in a corner, was able to force all of Player 2's moves. That was a real problem.
Moving Gopher to a hexagonal grid solved both of those problems. And it's actually a surprisingly good game. But being on a hexagonal grid, it's no longer the simplest game imaginable.
Mark
http://www.marksteeregames.com/index.html
